Biden wants to work toward a Palestinian state
The First Round of the War in the Middle East: Israel’s Military Effort to Win a Peaceful Agreement During the First Battle of the First World War
The air raid sirens in Eilat were activated after the Israeli military said it fired an missile at a “suspicious aerial target” near the Red Sea. The missiles and drones the Iranians launched mostly fell short or were shot down.
The war has rippled across the Middle East, with Iranian-backed groups attacking U.S. and Israeli targets. There is low-intensity fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon which could lead to all-out war.
The Israeli army said on Thursday that it had destroyed Hamas’ weapons manufacturing industry near a major road in central Gaza. The complex was made of weapons factories and tunnels used to move arms throughout Gaza.
In all parts of Gaza, Israelis have continued to target militant targets, often killing women and children. Early Thursday, medics said an Israeli airstrike on a home killed 16 people, half of them children, in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
Thousands of Palestinians have complied with the Israeli order to evacuate and are now in southern Gaza, where there are overflowing UN-run shelters.
Even though most of Gaza has been destroyed, Hamas continues to launch rockets into Israel. It says it will not release any more hostages until there is a permanent cease-fire, something Israel and the United States, its top ally, have ruled out.
There was no word on whether the medicines that entered the territory under the deal had been distributed to hostages who were being held by Hamas.
The agreement was the first to be brokered between the warring sides since November. The deal includes shipments of medicine, food, and humanitarian aid for Palestinians as well.
Israel was deeply divided over Netanyahu’s plan to reform the judicial system. The country has come together in support of the war. There are divisions once again over Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
Dozens of people gathered in Tel Aviv to show solidarity with the family of Kfir Bibas, who is the youngest Israeli hostage, on his first birthday. The red-haired infant and his 4-year-old brother Ariel were taken hostage along with their mother, Shiri, and their father, Yarden. Four people are in captivity.
Israeli Security in the Light of the Hamas Attack: The Case For a Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Israeli Problem
The comments prompted an immediate rebuke from the White House. Kirby said that President Joe Biden would “not stop working” toward a two-state solution.
“This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel,” he said.
He said that the idea of sovereignty is in conflict with the idea of security control over the entire territory. What can we do?
Why do I say this? Netanyahu made a clear statement at the Thursday news conference that he had only recently spoken about. Despite the disastrous Hamas attack on Oct. 7 happening on his watch, he is going to frame his campaign to stay in power with this argument: The Americans and the Arabs want to force a Palestinian state down Israel’s throat, and I am the only Israeli leader strong enough to resist them. So vote for me, even if I messed up on Oct. 7 and the Gaza war is not going all that great. Only I can protect us from Biden’s plans for Gaza to become part of a Palestinian state, along with the West Bank, governed by a transformed Palestinian Authority.
The Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister stated at the conference that the Kingdom is prepared to establish full relations with Israel. “But that can only happen through peace for the Palestinians, through a Palestinian state,” he said.
Speaking Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Blinken said the two-state solution was the best way to protect Israel, unify moderate Arab countries and isolate Israel’s arch-enemy, Iran.
The creation of a Palestinian state guaranteeing Israel’s security is the only viable solution to the conflict that has dragged on for years, according to Mr. Biden. In the meantime, Mr. Biden has suggested that a “revitalized” version of the Palestinian Authority, which partially governs the West Bank, take over Gaza as well once Hamas has been removed from power there — another idea Mr. Netanyahu has rejected because he considers the authority corrupt and compromised by support for terrorists.
The staggering cost of the war has led to increasing calls from the international community to halt the offensive. After initially giving Israel wall-to-wall support in the early days of the war, the United States, Israel’s closest ally, has begun to express misgivings and urged Netanyahu to spell out his vision for postwar Gaza.
He rejected claims by a growing chorus of Israeli critics that those goals are not achievable, vowing to press ahead for many months. “We’re not going to settle for something short of an absolute victory,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu said in a nationally televised news conference that Israel would not halt its offensive until it realized its goal of ridding Gaza of Hamas.
The tense back and forth reflected what has become a wide rift between the two allies over the scope of Israel’s war and its plans for the future of the beleaguered territory.
It looks as if President Biden will be running against Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in the same year. We could save a lot of time if Trump chose Netanyahu as his running mate. Netanyahu is turning on Biden in ways that could help him win over right-wing Jews in the U.S., and Biden is costing him with his own progressive base. Trump-Netanyahu 2024 — that has a certain ring to it, not to mention an air of truth.
The First White House Call on Two-State Solutions Among the Security Constraints on the Possible Solution of the U.N.-Israel War
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“There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” the president told reporters at the White House several hours after the call, their first in nearly a month amid tension over the war. There are some countries in the U.N. that don’t have their own military. There are some states that have limitations. He said that there are ways in which this could work.
The call on Friday came a day after Mr. Netanyahu had told reporters in Israel that he had rebuffed Mr. Biden’s efforts to pressure him into a two-state solution. “The prime minister needs to be able to say no, even to our best friends,” Mr. Netanyahu told reporters.
Mr. Kirby said the two leaders also discussed hostages held by Hamas, humanitarian aid to Gaza, the release of tax payments to the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank and the shift in Israel’s military strategy to more surgical operations. Mr. Kirby confirmed that the leaders were still at odds over the idea of a Palestinian state.
The long gap between calls in itself was an indication of friction. The two men spoke roughly once a day for about a month after the Oct. 7 attack. This time it took 27 days to reach out again.
“I am not a stranger, I am just a friend,” Rep. Kirby told reporters at the Crab Synagogue on Tuesday
Mr. Kirby tried to play down the conflict, saying their differences were honest disagreements between friends. “We’re not going to agree on everything,” he said. We said that. Good friends and allies can have candid discussions and that’s what we do.
The latter phrase, often used by Palestinians and their supporters, is taken by many backers of Israel as an antisemitic statement advocating the eradication of Israel, which lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, as do the Palestinian territories. Representative Tlaib used that phrase and the House censured her.
